


Sometimes, Quiet Is Violent

by southspinner



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Band Fic, JM Secret Santa 2015, M/M, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 22:35:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5515811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/southspinner/pseuds/southspinner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marco's not exactly one for big dreams and bigger risks, but a guest spot on a summer tour as a favor for a friend - and a certain solo artist he meets there - might just change things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes, Quiet Is Violent

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AshAuditore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshAuditore/gifts).



> OKAY SO. This was my project for the 2015 JM Gift Exchange, and when I saw that one of my prompts was a Band AU, it, uh... got away from me a bit. So, here's some background info!
> 
> Jean's character and the sound of his music was very much inspired by Tyler Joseph of twenty one pilots. Like... you can't ask me to write a piece about the boys as a two-piece band and not expect me to not go with TOP, dude. That was a given.
> 
> Listening homework time!  
> [Ode To Sleep](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBkgF_1ZDj8) \- basically what Jean's first song that Marco hears sounds like  
> [Ride](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw-0pbY9JeU) \- for the section when they first move into the apartment  
> [Stressed Out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXRviuL6vMY) \- again, for the apartment section  
> [Goner](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J5mE-J1WLk) \- for that heart-to-heart talk in the van  
> [Kitchen Sink](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNbzh_Rbw7A)\- just... a good song for Jean in this whole thing. He was probably writing this during the van scene.  
> [Tear In My Heart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nky4me4NP70) \- for the happy apartment scene
> 
> I hope you like your Gift Exchange present, dearie! Happy Holidays!

There’s a certain finesse it requires to live in a van with three other people, and Marco hasn’t quite mastered it yet.

Morning comes hatefully early (When did he go to sleep? Six in the morning? Seven?), Reiner’s phone blaring its obscene alarm and waking them all up in a chorus of agonized groans. Marco sits up and smacks his head off the ceiling, falling out of his bunk and onto a pile of mic cables that constrict around him like a nest of electronic snakes.

Off to a good start, then.

“Morning, sunshines!” Sasha chirps from the front seat, swerving sharply to the left and abandoning any further conversation in favor of venting all her unshed road rage at the guy who just cut her off.

“Hnnnngah.”

“That means ‘good morning,’ right?”

“Shut _up,_ dude.” Rubbing at the already growing lump on his head, Marco sits up on the van’s not-so-gently swaying floor. Reiner’s already gone back to sleep, snoring right through the stupid alarm. Marco reaches up into his bunk and pokes at his ribs until he regains consciousness with a mumbled tide of cursing. After the alarm stops shrieking, he extracts himself from the cables enough to poke his head up into the front, squinting at the sunlight and trying to make out something on the exit signs. “Where are we?”

“Buttfuck Nowhere, Pennsylvania,” says Sasha, steering with her knee long enough to stretch her tattooed arms up over her head with a squeaky little yawn. All four of them look pretty rough, but she somehow manages to pull it off better than the rest, hair thrown back in a messy bun and Star Wars pajama pants slung low across her hips. Marco looks homeless, and his best friend’s sitting there with a baggy t-shirt and last night’s smudged eyeliner that could be a capital-L Look. He only hates her a little bit.

“Does Buttfuck Nowhere, Pennsylvania have a Taco Bell?” asks Bertholdt, dark hair a mess as he rolls out of his bunk into the same mess of cables that still has Marco trapped. “Ah, shit. Reiner, you said you were gonna clean this up!”

“That’s the roadie’s job,” Reiner shrugs, scrolling through his phone.

“We don’t have a roadie, you ass.”

“No Taco Bell, but I see a sign for a truck stop at the next exit,” Sasha interjects, pointing at a big blue sign on the side of the highway. “You guys know what that means!”

“Real showers,” all four of them sigh, so wistfully that they might as well be talking about an all-expenses-paid vacation to Tahiti.

Marco’s a little too busy sprinting to beat the other guys into the truck stop to dwell on the fact that his definition of a ‘real shower’ has become a coin-operated breeding ground for athlete’s foot off the side of the road in the middle of the Amish Country. The two months they’ve all been on the road have been the most disgusting kind of awesome, scrounging by on truck stop showers and dollar-menu feasts in the back of the van between venues. It’s an existence that’s justified by what it brings, a new place every day and a party every night.

But maybe he’ll wait a bit longer to tell his parents that he took a semester off from college to do it.

Sasha’s already showered and ready by the time he makes it out, leaning against the wall of the greasy diner attached to the truck stop and frowning around her cigarette as she types something into her phone.

“Connie?” he asks.

Sasha nods and snorts, flicking her smoke off into the parking lot and letting her head fall back against the wall. “Says he wants to skip physical therapy and play the last couple of shows. I told him that he’s an idiot and if he ever wants to play again, he needs to keep his ass at home.”

“Like he’ll listen.”

“I also told him that if he ever wants to get laid again, he needs to keep his ass at home.”

“Okay, so maybe he’ll listen.”

Sasha laughs at that, and Marco muses that if anyone in this world was meant to be a rock star, it was probably her. She’s got that front-woman magnetism about her even offstage, something that commands attention and, if she plays her cards right, adoration. There’s a reason he and Reiner and Bert are traveling across half the damn country in a smelly van that breaks down at the slightest provocation, and it’s because they all _know_ she’s got this in the bag. There’s not a lot of glamour, in being the opening act for half of a big-name band’s national tour, something that the audiences have to sit through if they want to see the _real_ show, but it’s a step. It’s a means to an end. And really, none of them regret it.

Bertholdt and Reiner are already inside the diner shoveling the endless pancake special into their faces, not bothering with anything other than wordless waves when Marco and Sasha walk in to join them. It’s a quick stop, like most of their meal breaks typically are. A short chance to shove food in their mouths and shower and pee before they hit the road again, doing fifteen over the speed limit because Sasha’s obsessed with being early. Marco insists on driving the last leg of the trip, though, partially because the bunks are claustrophobic and crowded, partially because he doesn’t trust Sasha to drive on no sleep and exactly six cans of Red Bull.

She passes out for a few hours, and the boys let her rest, Reiner and Bert sitting in the back playing Animal Crossing while Marco pilots them up the interstate towards the New York state line. After she wakes up, she practically yanks Marco out of the driver’s seat, though, bitching that he drives like her grandmother and burning rubber into New York.

The venue’s _big._ Most of them have been – Wings of Freedom have gotten too big for them to play intimate shows anymore – but this one’s damn near awe-inspiring, a towering structure that they can see from blocks away. The WOF bus pulls in right behind them, huge and so state-of-the-art that their little van looks like a bug beside it, and Sasha vaults out of the driver’s side to go greet the band as they disembark, all of them looking more well-rested and clean than their opening act. Must be nice to have a bathroom a few feet away at all times, Marco muses. And a fridge. And an actual bed.

“Soundcheck’s gonna take a fucking year,” Levi, the lead singer, grumbles as he hops down onto the pavement. “Places that are built like this always have shit acoustics.”

Sasha snickers. “You know, that’s what everyone loves about you. Your unfailing optimism.”

“Yeah, give me hell about it when you’re ready to throttle your sound guy because everything you sing sounds like you’re at the bottom of a well.”

“Reiner’s our sound guy, so…”

“Please don’t throttle me,” Reiner chimes in, yanking a couple of amps out of the back of the van. Levi rolls his eyes and follows his bandmates into the building.

Sasha’s got an odd habit of disappearing when there’s heavy stuff that needs lifted, so Marco and Reiner end up doing the brunt of the work, hauling amps and cables and cases upon cases of equipment into the venue. After three trips, his truck stop shower’s been all but invalidated, hair plastered to his forehead in sweat-soaked strands of black. His back aches, his arms are protesting hours before he’ll ever even have the chance to pick up a pair of drumsticks, and every second he spends holding a teetering tower of black hard-shell cases becomes another where he starts thinking that he’d give his firstborn child for just one roadie.

“Yeah, I _know,_ but – oh _shi—_ “

Marco doesn’t even really know what happens, his vision obscured by a stack of boxes. He feels the impact, though, goes down like a sack of bricks, an avalanche of the stuff he was carrying falling down on top of him. Somewhere under all the sharp corners, he feels something softer, a pair of legs tangled up with his own. It takes a second to claw his way out from all the equipment, but when he does, there’s someone else on the floor with him, a skinny kid around his age. He’s sort of gangly, all sharp angles with a pointed chin and high cheekbones, brownish eyes and a scruffy blonde undercut ruffled up by the fall. The kid takes one look at Marco, and his eyes go wide. “Oh my God, dude, I’m so sorry. Are you okay? Is your stuff okay? Are you—“

“It’s cool, it’s cool.” Marco shakes his head, getting to his feet and dusting himself off. “It’s in cases for a reason, and I’ll live. You okay?”

“Yeah.” The kid stays on the floor, scrambling for boxes, so nervous that he sort of reminds Marco of one of those little yappy dogs that pee on the carpet when they get too excited. “Wasn’t looking where I was going, stupid, stupid… God, I hope your stuff’s okay. I know how expensive all that shit is.”

“Most of our equipment’s older than we are, so it’s not like one fall made it any crappier,” Marco laughs, offering him a hand up. “Now, if you’d run into someone carrying the headliner’s stuff, it might have gotten nasty.”

The kid stops mid-apology, blinking up at Marco before he takes his hand and hauls himself up. “You’re the opener.”

“Nah, I’m Marco. But I’m playing for the opening act, yeah.”

“Oh , I just thought – uh, I’m Jean. Hi,” the kid stammers, scratching at the back of his head. “I’m the opener. Well, the opener for the opener. I’m _your_ opener.”

“Oh, cool, we’ve got two openers tonight?” Marco asks, gathering up his stuff again and starting down towards the main stage.

Jean fidgets – does he ever _stop_ fidgeting? – grabbing a few of the cases off Marco’s pile and walking along beside him. “Yeah. I guess the other band that was gonna do it had to cancel, and I work here on the weekends, so my boss gave me a call and asked if I had enough stuff to play a set, so… here we are?”

The stage and the hall it’s situated in are both _massive._ Marco sets his armload of cases down, and the sound echoes and turns back on itself until it’s almost unrecognizable. Levi was apparently right about the acoustics. Jean sets down what he was carrying as well, dropping to sit on the edge of the stage with an exhausted huff. Something lights up in his eyes as he looks out over the thousands of empty chairs, and it makes him looks like a completely different person. For a second, the weird, fidgety kid is gone, replaced by something so focused and determined that it takes Marco aback.

But the moment passes, and Jean twitches back to his old self when Marco plops down beside him, letting his legs swing over the edge of the stage. “So, what kind of stuff does your band do?”

“No band. Just me.” Jean answers with a sharp shake of his head, long fingers knotting up together in his lap. “It’s uh… My stuff, it’s… Weird? Like, take Broadway showtunes, okay? And then a little bit of 80’s synth-pop. And then a little bit of pop-punk. And then mix all of that with slam poetry and add a hip-hop beat.”

Marco blinks. “That’s different.”

Jean shrugs. “It works. Or at least I think it does. I listened to you guys when I found out I’d be opening for you. Your EP’s lit.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Every one of his movements is so _fast,_ disjointed, like he can’t decide which direction he wants to let the world pull him. His smile’s heartbreak-pretty, though, a little crooked and endearingly earnest as he pulls his knees up to his chest and perches his chin on top of them. “What do you play?”

“I play drums, but I’m not the drummer,” Marco explains, laughing at the confused look that earns him. “The lead singer’s my best friend. Her boyfriend, who’s the actual drummer, won’t be on tour because of a pretty gnarly accident that broke both his arms.”

“Jesus Christ, what happened?”

“He got drunk and rode a shopping cart into traffic.”

Jean lets out a loud cackle that echoes around the empty concert hall, clapping a hand over his mouth and twitching into a weird, half-horrified expression. “Oh my God, I’m sorry, that’s not funny.”

“Nah, it really is.” It takes a moment for Jean to relax again, and by the time he does, the rest of Marco’s bandmates have shown up, Sasha yelling something about a pre-show party in WOF’s dressing room. Marco gets up with a weary smile, already knowing that he’ll spend the hour before show time trying to sober his lead singer up, but Sasha’s been so wound up lately that he doesn’t really begrudge her for it. Looking behind him, he raises a hand in a parting wave to Jean, who’s still curled up on the stage floor. “Nice talking to you, dude. See you at soundcheck.”

He only gets a nod and a twitchy wave in response, but Jean smiles again, hopping up and running offstage. Weird kid. Marco likes him.

****************

Sasha’s drunk by soundcheck, and exactly no one is surprised. She’s not so trashed that she can’t do her job, but Marco’s about two big hugs and long speeches about how he’s the best friend in the world away from prescribing a cold shower and a strong cup of coffee. He leaves her in Bertholdt’s custody long enough to dash from their shared dressing room to the stage, wondering where the stage manager’s gotten to so he can ask about maybe pushing their time slot back a few minutes.

He doesn’t find the stage manager, but he does find Jean, standing in the middle of the stage with a microphone in his hand, squinting at something up above the balcony. “Cut the high end a bit, Eren. I’m still getting some hiss down here, man.”

 _“The high end’s fucking fine!”_ an angry, disembodied echo answers.

“Check one, check two, check three… You hear that shit? Sounds like a rattlesnake nest, now cut the high end!”

_“Tell me how to do my job one more time and you can walk home, asshole!”_

Jean grumbles something under his breath, squeezing his eyes shut and drumming his fingers in a disjointed rhythm on the side of the mic. “Okay, whatever. Go ahead and roll the backing track for ‘Oculus.’”

Jean’s got a setup on the stage that’s frankly terrifying to look at. There’s a couple of mixing decks set up beside the mic stand, so many flashing buttons that Marco gets confused jut _looking_ at them, wired into a MacBook on Jean’s other side. Behind all of that, there’s a keyboard and another mic stand, and no one there to operate any of it except for the twitchy, gangly kid standing in the middle of it all. A bare-bones backing track starts playing from the sound booth, a steady beat and a thin synth line, and Marco starts working his way into a preemptive wince, because no way is this going to sound like anything.

And then Jean _explodes_ into a frenzy of motion, and the music fills out into a gorgeous swell, layered lines and a complex beat. His fingers fly over the mixing deck, laying out patters and setting loops, all while his other hand darts over to the computer, controlling the whole thing from a program with hardly a glance at the screen. And all the while, it’s as if the music _moves_ him, pulling him to and fro with every measure until he’s almost like a puppet on the strings of his own song. Still standing back by the stage door, Marco lets out a low whistle and leans back against the wall to watch the show.

It’s _weird_ music, but it’s intoxicating, even more so when Jean’s voice actually comes in, thin and reedy, sitting on top of the accompaniment in a wavering line that almost sounds breakable. He’s not rapping, not really, more along the lines of speaking in rhythm. Showtunes meets synth-pop meets pop-punk meets slam poetry, just like he’d said earlier. The first verse spirals out into a heavy silence, and Jean pauses, held in thrall by the moment spiraled high and left to wonder, and then he grabs the mixing deck and the mic and yanks them both over behind the keyboard, snapping the microphone into its stand and jabbing at something on the deck that makes the music start again. And, damn it all, he can _sing,_ a bright tenor that rises into a chorus that shakes the floor under Marco’s feet.

The song goes on, and Jean’s all over the stage, jumping back out in front of the keyboard and the retreating to play the chorus again and then running over to his laptop to set another loop. Not once does he stop moving, and he looks _exhilarated,_ powering through the end of the song and standing in the emptiness that follows with a slow look of weariness coming over him, like he’s lost something since the music stopped. A few beats of quiet follow, and he closes his eyes again, nodding like someone’s told him something he needed to hear before he leans back into the mic. “Yeah, Eren, you were right. The high end’s fine.”

Marco starts clapping, not even caring about what an idiot he probably looks like. “That was _insane,_ man!”

Jean jumps, then twitches, then laughs, scratching at the back of his neck again as he wanders over to the stage door. “Told you it was weird.”

“Yeah, but it’s _incredible,_ ” Marco insists, shaking his head. “How do you even _do_ all of that on your own?”

Instead of answering, Jean just frowns. “That’s not how it’s supposed to sound.”

“Sounded pretty great to me.”

“But that’s not how it’s _supposed_ to sound,” he says, an anguish in it that actually makes Marco’s chest ache a little. “The stuff I write, it’s just… it’s not meant to be for a one-piece operation. I need more.”

Marco’s at a loss (which is nothing new, really), shuffling his feet and looking out at thousands of empty chairs. “So get some bandmates. With talent like that, it’s pretty much criminal if you don’t pursue it.”

Jean laughs, but it’s not the same as it was earlier, bitter and tired. “I grew up in a gated community in Trost, dude. Most of my friends are busy in the Ivy League now. How many people do you think I know who’d be down to start a band?”

“What about your sound guy?”

“There’s a reason he’s my sound guy. I tried to teach him to play the ukulele and he threw the thing against a wall in ten minutes.”

“Fair enough,” Marco laughs. In the hallway outside the stage door, Sasha’s yelling is drawing closer. The band’s coming in for soundcheck. “But I still think… hold up, did you say you’re from Trost?”

He nods.

“No way! I’m from Jinae. My town’s like… three hours down the interstate from you. Small world.”

“Yeah. Small world.” Preoccupied and distant, Jean looks back out at the empty concert hall, that same spark from before flashing in his eyes. It disappears in the wake of Sasha crashing through the door with her stage clothes on and swaying slightly on her feet. Jean’s mouth opens like he’s about to say something, but he must think better of it, shaking his head and going to gather up his stuff. “Have a good soundcheck, guys. See you later.”

“Who was that?” Sasha asks, blinking at the stage door after Jean disappears through it.

“The other opener,” says Marco. “He’s incredible. Really weird, but incredible.”

“Save the goo-goo eyes for after the set, Romeo,” Sasha snorts, leaning on the mic stand. “Check one, check two… Reiner, this sounds like _shit,_ c’mon, dude!”

The rest of the band retreats back to their dressing room after the doors open, but Marco stays off to the side of the stage and watches Jean’s entire set. It’s short, only four songs played while everyone is still filing into their seats, but he watches from beginning to end, never once looking away from the change that comes over the twitchy kid from the hallway when he’s out in front of a microphone.

Marco stopped playing drums when he went to college for a reason. Jazz band and the ungodly teenage jam sessions in his garage were all well and good, but there was never any real _power_ in it, nothing pushing him forward. It was something he was good at, but talent without drive can only go so far. Coming on tour with Sasha had been a favor for a friend, and the adulation at the shows and the perks of life on tour were nice, but…

He can’t hold himself back from the thought that he wishes he could feel like Jean does. And for that four-song set, he gets a brief glimpse of what that must be like, because watching him leave it all out there and walk off the stage panting like he’s run a marathon, there’s _power_ in that. Jean makes music he can _believe_ in, and Marco knows it’s stupid, but he spends his own band’s entire set playing with a little more heart because of it.

He knows it’s stupid. He _knows,_ but that doesn’t stop him from tracking Jean down after their set is over, dashing outside the venue to where he’s loading his gear into his sound guy’s beat-up minivan. “Hey! Great job on your set.”

“Thanks,” Jean grins. Even after all of that, he still buzzes with that strange, fractal energy, bouncing on the balls of his feet and drumming his hands against the rusted body of the minivan behind him. “Provided a nice soundtrack to everyone getting concessions and sitting down. You guys were awesome, too. I stuck around for the first part of your set, but Eren wanted to head out.”

“Hey, no worries.” Marco waves him off, fiddling with the hem of his shirt and struggling for words that don’t want to untangle themselves. “I just… Your stuff is so good. It’s so _good,_ and with what you said earlier, I… do you have a phone on you?”

Jean blinks at him like he’s just grown a second head, but pulls a cracked Samsung out of his pocket, holding it out. Marco grabs it, trying to fight down the heat rising in his cheeks as he types in his number. “The tour’s over in two weeks. If you still need people, I’m right down the road. I’d be down for it if you would.”

There’s a long moment where Jean does nothing but fix him with a piercing look, like he’s trying to figure out whether Marco’s joking or not. But then he _smiles,_ so big and bright that it makes Marco’s stomach do a series of backflips, looking between Marco and his phone and actually jumping up and down. “Yes! Are you _kidding_ me, yes! I watched you play, man, you’re awesome, and you… you want… Oh my God, this is _…_ ”

“Marco! Bus call in ten!” Reiner yells from the door, waving him back towards where the van’s parked.

“Be there in a minute!” He calls, turning back to Jean and shoving his hands in his pockets. “So, yeah. Just hit me up whenever.”

“Sure thing.”

Sasha’s still too drunk to be of much use to anyone, so Marco drives the van that night, staring at the darkness out beyond the glow of the headlights and smiling for no reason. Halfway through Jersey, his phone buzzes, and he smiles for more reasons than he can think of.

*****************

Six months later, Marco realizes that his concepts of a real bed and a real shower haven’t really improved that much.

The tiny apartment that he and Jean share in the rougher part of downtown Trost is a shithole at best. The shower has next to no water pressure and likes to go from freezing to scalding in seconds. Jean sleeps on a ratty mattress on the floor in the one bedroom, and Marco has a futon in the living room that they salvaged from Goodwill. The heat doesn’t work, the ceiling leaks when it rains, and they survive on ramen and pizza rolls.

He’s never been happier in his entire life.

The conversation he had with his parents explaining why he was dropping out of school one semester from graduation was about as far from pleasant as it was possible to get, but time’s begun to smooth it out. His dad still refuses to give him a penny of financial support, and his mom still talks about how he’s breaking her heart, but at least the conversations don’t end in screams anymore.

He’s got a job waiting tables that pays for his half of the rent, and Jean’s the world’s twitchiest barista at the Starbucks down the street. Between the two of them, they save up enough to go halfsies on a practice space so the landlord doesn’t evict them over Marco playing drums at two in the morning. They go to their day jobs. They come home. Jean writes, illegible scribbles in a torn-up notebook that he keeps on his person at all times. They go to the practice space. They record. Jean frowns and shakes his head and writes some more. They get up the next day and do it again.

Jean’s not the most normal roommate, but Marco knew that going into all of this. He stays up at weird hours, takes more pills in the mornings than Marco really cares to count, fluctuates between intense outbursts of energy and sitting on the futon staring at nothing for hours. But he’s focused on making their stuff work like a man possessed, always writing, always muttering lines and verses into the voice recorder on his phone to save them for later. And yeah, he’s weird, but he’s also funny, and smart, and knows more about Doctor Who than anyone Marco’s ever met, and sometimes Marco catches himself thinking stupid stuff about his smile. So in the end, it all balances out.

Winter in Trost is cold, damp, and unpleasant, but you’d think it was the start of summer vacation by the way Jean bursts into the apartment one day in December, still wearing his Starbucks uniform and clutching a piece of paper with a manic smile plastered across his face. “We got it.”

“Got what?” After working the lunch shift from Hell, Marco’s too exhausted to extract himself from his Call of Duty campaign on the futon to ask Jean what the hell he’s talking about.

Jean, however, is the picture of energy, jumping between Marco and the TV and hauling him up by his shirt to shove the paper at him. “Studio time, dude. That favor you called in with Sasha pulled through. We’re making an EP. We’re making a _fucking_ EP!”

Marco sits there, nose pressed to the paper and jaw slack. “What?”

“You. Me. Jinae. Next week. We’re gonna record some shit and get out there and sell it, man. This is it. This is what we’ve been waiting for.”

Slowly, in time with the realization that this is actually happening, a mile-wide grin stretches across Marco’s face. “We’re making an EP.”

Jean answers with a jerky nod, offering Marco a hand and helping him off the couch. “We’re making an EP.”

“We’re making an EP!” For as little as he is, Jean hugs _hard,_ a constricting grip around Marco’s ribs that squeezes his breath out and makes his bones creak and sets something sparking electric in his veins. He wheezes out a laugh, and Jean starts cackling too, and the two of them holler like idiots and dance around the apartment until Mrs. Downstairs beats on her ceiling and screams for them to shut up.

Marco reminds himself to send Sasha the most extravagant thank-you gift he possibly can when they’re famous.

****************

Five months later, in the back of the van that started it all, Marco remembers that fame doesn’t come so easily.

The tour’s been long and hard, and it’s taken a lot out of both of them. Sasha gave them the van for old times’ sake – after all, now that she’s got her own shiny new tour bus, she doesn’t need it – but that was the only free pass they got. It’s been truck stop showers and dollar menu dinners for every day for three months, and it’s almost enough to make him wonder if this stepping-stone is worth it.

They have fans. The EP did what it was supposed to do – got their names out there, got people listening – but even that came with a price. Marco’s good with people. He likes going out after shows and signing autographs. He’s got a good rapport with the few diehard fans that show up to the shows, knows how to interact with them. Jean… not so much.

It’s a miracle that Marco even manages to get him to go out for signings, and after that, he’s _gone,_ shooting for the van like a bullet and barricading himself inside with his notebook. It’s not like his first tour with Sasha, where there were bus parties with Wings of Freedom every night and a million funny stories to take home with him. Marco’s the only one who talks to the headlining band at all, and Jean gives him a death glare that shoots him down every time he even begins to ask about maybe going out and having some fun.

And even with everything, even with as close as they are and how much Marco believes in Jean and how much he still won’t even admit to himself about him, living in a van with someone for three months is enough to make them grate on your last goddamn nerve.

“You don’t have to spend every waking second writing, you know,” Marco snaps one night post-show, climbing up into the van and staring down at Jean, who’s stretched out on his bunk with his notebook. “You could actually go out and interact with the outside world.”

“Hn.”

“Would you stop moping for _two seconds_ and—“

“Moping?” Jean’s head snaps up in half a second flat, his eyes narrowing. “I’m _moping?_ I’ve got one shot to make this shit work, and I’m putting my blood and guts and everything I’ve got into it, and that constitutes _moping?_ ”

Groaning, Marco drags a hand down the side of his face. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“No, it is. Because you’re the resident ray of sunshine, and everyone else is just a downer to you, right?”

“Oh, fuck _off._ ”

“This isn’t the same for you as it is for me!” Jean shouts, his voice wavering and cracking. His hands curl up into fists at his sides when he stands, shaking and struggling to get his words out. “What, you wanted to stick it to your parents and feel like you were actually doing something with your life instead of pushing pencils in an accounting firm forever? Cool. But I… this is all I’ve got, Marco. Everything _sucks._ My brain sucks and life sucks and I’ve got like two good things that make it worth getting up in the morning, so this _has_ to work, okay, because if it doesn’t… If it doesn’t…”

All the fire goes out of him, and he folds himself back down onto his bunk, head in his hands. Marco feels like kicking himself, but opts instead to sit down beside Jean with a weary sigh, letting his smaller frame lean up against him for support.

“This… what we do, it makes me better,” Jean says after a while, barely more than a whisper. “You help make me better. It’s not a cure, but it’s not something I wanna lose, either.”

Marco’s heart breaks a little. It’s not fair, that Jean’s got this heavy of a burden to bear while there are far worse people in the world who have it so much easier than him. It’s not fair that someone with that much talent and that much heart feels like he has to destroy himself in the name of making their dreams happen, and it’s not fair that sometimes Marco feels helpless in all of this, like one day he’ll only ever be good for picking up Jean’s pieces when he finally rips himself to shreds. It’s a thousand different kinds of unfair, that Jean manages to be so broken and so beautiful all at once, and that there’s nothing he can do about either of those except let it ache.

It’s not fair, but it’s what they’ve got, and Marco would rather take that and run with it than let them stagnate and shatter.

“You know that you’re not required to be in love with your own sadness to make this work, right?” He asks, ducking down until Jean meets his gaze. “You can do things that make you happy. You’re _allowed_ to be happy.”

Jean huffs out a humorless laugh. “Happiness doesn’t sell.”

“Who gives a shit whether it sells or not?” Frowning, Marco gestures around at the van’s messy interior, kicking his feet up on the opposite bunk. “I’m not staying in the back of a van and eating fast food for three months straight with you because I think it’s gonna make me rich. I’m doing it because it makes me happy. You’ve got the right to not be miserable, Jean. You’ve got people out there who love you. Let them.”

_You’ve got people out there who love you. You’ve got someone in here who l-_

_No._

Before he can finish a dangerous train of though, Jean interrupts it, nodding and staring out the windshield at where the fans are still huddled around the venue. “Okay. Just…”

“Not tonight?”

“Not tonight.”

“Cool,” Marco says, stretching out in the bunk and patting the narrow space beside him while he reaches for his laptop. “You wanna watch Doctor Who?”

Jean nods again, a soft smile on his lips as he curls up and rests his head on Marco’s shoulder. “Yeah.”

He’s asleep before the episode’s over, and Marco doesn’t have the heart to wake him, because for one stolen moment in a concert venue parking lot, Jean looks like he’s found a little bit of peace.

That means more than screaming crowds or record labels, and Marco realizes this with the same quiet acceptance as knowing that the sun will rise. He’s got no reason to fight it anymore, and there, with Jean burrowing into the crook of his neck and murmuring something in his sleep, he realizes that he doesn’t really want to.

****************

Two months later, their world turns upside down.

It’s raining and the ceiling is leaking again. Jean’s on the futon writing, and Marco’s standing in the kitchen flipping through the stack of overdue bills and junk mail he grabbed from the mailbox on his way up.

“Sasha said we could see about moving into her old place, y’know,” he mentions, throwing an envelope stamped with ‘OVERDUE’ in red ink into their overflowing trash can. “Now that she’s moving out to LA, she needs someone to take over her lease.”

“Can we afford it?” Jean asks.

“Nah.”

“Pointless speculation, then.”

Marco laughs and keeps skimming the mail, stopping and frowning over an envelope addressed from a record company they sent their EP in to months ago. Probably another rejection. “I mean, we could always find a third roommate, so long as we can convince them to – oh my God.”

Jean doesn’t look up from his notebook. “Hm?”

“Oh my _God._ ”

“What, are they shutting off the electric again?”

“Dear Mr. Kirschtein and Mr. Bodt,” Marco starts to read aloud, his voice shaking. “It is with great pleasure that Sina Records wishes to extend a welcome into our esteemed family—“

Jean’s notebook hits the floor with a soft thud. “Oh my God.”

“We got signed,” Marco whispers.

Jean says nothing, a hand coming up over his mouth as his eyes swim with unshed tears.

“We got signed.” It’s all Marco can make himself say, repeating it until it sounds real. “We got signed. We got _signed._ We…”

With the same twitchy quickness he’s always moved with, Jean bolts off the couch and across the room. Marco’s still too busy staring at the letter to expect the kiss, falls back against the wall of the kitchen under Jean’s momentum and lets the paper drop to the floor in favor of holding him, hands cradling his face and lips curved into a smile so wide it hurts even as Jean kisses him again, and again, and again. They laugh and cry and kiss and crash ungracefully onto Jean’s crappy mattress in the bedroom. Mrs. Downstairs prods her ceiling with a broom and screams for them to have some common decency. They don’t care.

Marco doesn’t sleep that night, staring at the ceiling with Jean curled into his side and the lines of the letter on repeat in his mind.

****************

Two years later, they leave LA on a ridiculously early flight, landing in New York to a crowd of screaming fans and a brand new tour bus waiting for them.

Jean spends most of the ride to the venue with his nose in his notebook, but Marco doesn’t say anything to him about it. It’s how he copes, and he’s only had time to fall more in love with the way his lips purse when he’s writing.

It only felt right that they start the tour where they started it all, the venue’s acoustics still as awful as ever, late fall settling on the parking lot with a bone-deep chill. A rusty van pulls in behind the bus, a bunch of kids with tattoos and messy hair piling out of the back, dragging amps and guitars with them. Marco smiles.

Soundcheck goes quicker than he remembered, but that might be because Eren’s got his crack team of techies plus his own familiarity with his old stomping grounds. The two of them spend most of the time after doors open in the dressing room, watching the monitor while the opening act plays their set. They’re good. Give them a few more tours out of a van, and they’ll be going somewhere.

“You ready?” Marco asks, grabbing his drumsticks off the counter as soon as the curtain goes down and the openers start hauling their gear offstage.

Jean nods, leaning up to kiss him as he passes by. The corridors are narrow and confusing to Marco, but Jean worked here for every summer between his junior year of high school and the year he met Marco, could probably find his way around in the dark. A sold-out crowd of ten-thousand people _roars_ on the other side of the curtain, the sound washing over them in waves. Marco takes a seat behind his drum kit. Jean stands between the mixing deck and the mic stand, fingers twitching against the metal. The curtain goes up.

Jean smiles. “Good evening, Albany. Let’s go.”

Marco reaches behind his kit to start the backing track, and the first song Jean ever played for him begins again, filling up the same room with the same simple beats and thin synth line. And then Jean slams a hand down on the mixing deck, and Marco starts in on the drums, and the look on Jean’s face doesn’t need words to convey what he wants to say.

It sounds how it’s supposed to sound.


End file.
